Estonian Folklore Archives
- Estonian Folklore Archives
The Estonian Folklore Archives was established as the central folklore archives of Estonia in 1927.1 The original collections of the archives were built upon manuscript reports and accounts of Estonian folklore, consisting of over 115,000 pages of material contributed primarily by the noted Estonian folklore collector Jakob Hurt (1939-1907) and his more than 1,400 informants in the late nineteenth century. Today the Estonian Folklore Archives holds nearly 1.5 million manuscript pages as well as a collection of photographs, videos, and audio recordings.
After the death of Jakob Hurt in 1906, the tomes of manuscripts collected and systematized by him were transferred to the repository of the Finnish Literature Society (Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura) in Finland. One reason for the move was the lack of appropriate preservation conditions for such valuable material in Estonia; another was the Finnish folklore researcher Kaarle Krohn’s long-term interest in the materials. Following this transfer, a large-scale copying of Hurt’s collections was initiated in Finland (see further Järvinen 2008:57-58). Negotiations about the return of the collections were started in 1924 with an aim of establishing folklore archives in Estonia. Folklorist Oskar Loorits (1900-1961) was largely the brain behind the idea, and he was assigned the task of managing the retransfer of the collections. The central archives were to be established on the example of the Finnish Literature Society in Finland and were directly inspired by the establishment of the Latvian Folklore Archives in 1924 as the first of its kind in the Baltic region. Following lengthy discussions about which institution would control the central archives, the collections were successfully retransferred to Estonia in 1927. The archives started operations at the beginning of September, but on September 24, 1927, at the first meeting of the governing committee, the Estonian Folklore Archives was officially established as an independent institution under the Estonian National Museum.
The archives were housed in 1927 at a former residence on Aia (now Vanemuise) Street in Tartu. The Archival Library of the Estonian National Museum, which had been established in 1909 and originally intended as an Estonian national library, was also brought there at that time. Two years later in 1929 the Estonian Cultural History Archives was founded in the same building.
The main objective of the newly-founded archives was to bring previously existing folklore collections together into one place in order to facilitate research, to organize extensive fieldwork throughout Estonia, and to begin broad research on the folklore collected. Institution-initiated collecting of folklore in Estonia was started in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, resulting in a total of over 8,000 pages housed in the collection of the Learned Estonian Society and in the folklore collection of the Estländische Literärische Gesellschaft literary union, both located in Tallinn. These collections were incorporated into the Estonian Folklore Archives, as were many others (for instance, Hurt’s collection and the Estonian Students’ Society’s Collection), including the voluminous collection of the folklorist Matthias Johann Eisen (1857-1934) from the University of Tartu.
Archival Work
The archives’ primary purpose has always been to make the manuscript materials as easily available to researchers as possible. Thus, on the initiative of Oskar Loorits, who was at that time head of the archives, an appropriate system of registers and card files was developed to enable researchers to find and gain access to every single folklore piece in the handwritten volumes. In order to preserve the volumes for the sake of better analysis, copies of folklore texts were typed and organized in folders, and shorter texts were copied and organized into thematic card files. Folklore material was also copied from the collections of other institutions, where it was sometimes found among other material (for example, language corpora).
Ever since the founding of the archives, special emphasis has been placed on the idea that the archives’ workers must be involved not only in facilitating access to the materials but also in researching the material from one perspective or another. Oskar Loorits focused on Livonian folklore and particularly on Livonian religion, Herbert Tampere explored folk songs and tunes...
